Editor's Note

Assembly Member Jim Wood (D- Healdsburg) on Monday, Jan. 4, amended AB 21 to address a provision in his AB 243, one of the three bills Gov. Jerry Brown signed in 2015, that comprise the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act. The provision in question, if allowed to remain unchanged, will prevent local governments from enacting ordinances or other regulations regarding medical marijuana cultivation. Without this critical clean-up bill, the provision will pre-empt local governments from enacting any kind of local cultivation regulation if they do not have one in effect as of March 1, 2016.

Two news conferences on Monday, one in Los Angeles, and the other in Sacramento, on the bipartisan Senate budget proposal to tackle homelessness dominated the start of the Legislature’s New Year. Headlined by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León and former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, the press events rolled out a $2 billion bond proposal to build housing for mentally ill homeless to be funded by Proposition 63 (2004), the 1 percent tax levied on Californians earning more than $1 million annually to pay for mental health programs. The Senate leader projects that the “No Place Like Home” Initiative will fund 10,000 or more housing units throughout California.

Some of the most significant benefits of League membership for cities since 1988 have flowed from the League’s co-sponsorship of the California Statewide Communities Development Authority (CSCDA). This program provides a variety of public agencies and developers access to low-cost, tax-exempt financing and economic development tools. CSCDA issued $116.8 million in tax-exempt multifamily bonds that helped finance affordable housing projects in the cities of Long Beach and Santa Clarita.

The California Debt & Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC) is hosting two educational seminars, the first on advanced investments in late January and the second on disclosure in mid-February, that may be of interest to city finance officers.